Journalistic standards

[Sam[ Harris has had an op-ed in the New York Times, in which, in his bold and exhilarating way, he makes the case against appointing a Christian scientist, Francis Collins, to the important American government post of Director of the National Institutes of Health. This is not because Collins is a bad scientist…But he is, unashamedly, a Christian. He’s not a creationist, and he does science without expecting God to interfere. But he believes in God; he prays, and this is for Harris sufficient reason to exclude him from a job directing medical research.

That’s false. It’s flatly, demonstrably, brazenly, offensively, in your facely, unprofessionally, what journalistic ethics?y false. The fact that Collins believes in God and prays is precisely not for Harris sufficient reason to exclude him from the job at the NIH. Harris says very clearly what makes him ‘so uncomfortable about his nomination’ and it’s emphatically not just that he believes in God and prays. It’s right there in black and white, words on the page, easy to understand – yet Andrew Brown feels free to say he wrote something quite different. Why is this okay? Because it’s CiF ‘Belief’ and therefore there are no rules?

Harris explains his worry very clearly. He quotes Collins on god and morality, then

Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be of concern? There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States. This isn’t surprising, as very few scientific truths are self-evident, and many are counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a scientist. But few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion.

He then expands on why. By no stretch of the imagination does it boil down to ‘he believes in God; he prays.’ Yet Brown said, precisely, that it did – ‘this is for Harris sufficient reason to exclude him.’ He then goes on to say

Of course this is a fantastically illiberal and embryonically totalitarian position that goes against every possible notion of human rights and even the American constitution. If we follow Harris, government jobs are to be handed out on the basis of religious beliefs or lack thereof.

Then at the end he works himself up into a good old name-calling ‘demonizing’ fit.

[M]ilitant atheism, of the sort that would deny people jobs for their religions beliefs, doesn’t actually believe in real science at all, any more than it believes in reason. Rather, it uses “science” and “reason” as tribal labels, and “religion” as a term for witchcraft.

Whip that bogey – that terrifying militant atheism that would deny people jobs for their religions beliefs even though that’s not what Harris said.

It’s really interesting that many of the more vituperative atheist-haters – Madeleine Bunting, Chris Hedges, Mark Vernon, and certainly Andrew Brown – seem to be incapable of accurately reporting what atheists actually say. ‘A term for witchcraft’ indeed.

57 Responses to “Journalistic standards”

Of course, there are many people who would look at that article and see no problems with it. After all, there are now “two sides” to the argument; Harris’s nasty, obnoxious, militant screed, and Brown’s humble, gentle, eloquent defense.

It’s not really that important in the context of modern journalism that the “sides” be accurately, honestly, or ethically presented (or even that people bother to read the arguments in question), just that there be two of them.

Mooneybaumbet’s heart weeps at the incredible job of “framing” that’s been perpetrated here.

You know, I actually have a lot of sympathy for someone like PZ to get a little more explicit than would perhaps be suitable at table, what with so many, excuse my French, fuckwits who just don’t give a shit how many people they misrepresent as long as it furthers their own agenda.

And these are exactly the people, along with all those creationist clowns, who need to be called out on their game. That’s why PZ and Richard Dawkins are so desperately needed, because they will stand up and lead by example. Two cheers for them, I say.

Even after Brown’s previous militant, fundamentalist and strident anti-atheist articles, this one was particularly astonishing. I mean, how much clearer can Harris possibly be?

You know, I read the so-called “new atheist” books, some “old atheist” books and some Christian apologetics not influenced by the “new atheism”. I thought that the “new atheists” both represented the pro-god arguments fairly (they certainly covered those I’d heard over and over again) and dealt with them excellently. They were measured, reasonable, conciliatory but also challenging and condemnatory when it was called-for. But even at their most condemnatory they were careful to avoid dogmatism and tarring all believers with the same brush. I also thought they all made an effort to communicate with reasonable believers (ie believers who don’t swoon immediately upon hearing that an opinion that’s different to theirs exists) and find common ground, even if they didn’t manage to convince believers to become atheists. Dennett in particular is almost nauseatingly placatory in Breaking the Spell.

Now, I was already an atheist, and one who was willing to argue about gods before I read the books, so I thought it’d be interesting to see if my positive response to the books was just selection bias. I thought, naively, that these well-thought-out, well-argued books would surely lead to some intelligent responses from theists that’d take the points raised by the “new atheists” on board, and respond to them.

But that’s not what we get, is it? We get articles like this, and books, over and over again. From journalists, pastors, professors of theology, popes, bishops, university professors, etc.

We get the same idiotic points and moronic questions that, you’d think, would have been addressed by reading the books, or even a couple of articles by the authors in question.

We get “If these atheists don’t believe god exists, why do they spend so much time attacking Him?” when every single atheist writer always make it clear why they think it’s important to criticise RELIGION, which is something that exists and has demonstrable effects in the world.

We get “why are you atheists so angry?” when the atheist has just spent, like, an hour talking about examples of hideous crimes perpetrated by people who claimed they were doing god’s will, and who may have even avoided punishment by saying that. There are some things that you SHOULD get angry about.

We get “you atheists are just as bad as the fundamentalists you despise” when the worst religious fundamentalists LITERALLY THROW ACID IN THE FACES OF YOUNG GIRLS FOR THE CRIME OF LEARNING TO READ, and LITERALLY KILL PEOPLE, and all the atheists have done is write some books that contained things certain believers thought were mean.

Apparently Prof Stenger is writing a book called “The New Atheism” where he clears up the popular lies about the new militant neo-rationalist extremist fundamentalist followers of the faith of atheism, and I’m sure it’ll be brilliant. But the popular lies about the “new atheists” are refuted in their own books! If the Browntings of the world didn’t get it the first time, or if they did but they’re happy to deliberately twist it anyway, then what good is another book going to do?

I think that Daniel Dennett once said that it’s the responsibility of a critic to make an effort to view the thing they criticise in the best possible light before running it down, because that’s the only honest thing to do. Cherry-picking the quotes that can be ripped out of context to give the worst possible impression of somebody, as Brown continues to do, is just a betrayal of basic honesty.

In the same way that Madeleine Bunting’s articles accusing atheists of shrillness, stridency, ranting and lack of content are always shrill, strident, ranting and content-free, Brown’s attempts to make atheists look evil are always absolutely vile.

If I was religious, the fact that people like this have to resort to such tactics to defend religion would at least make me vomit, and would probably make me seriously consider chucking the whole thing.

What I found the most bizarre was M Bunting’s attempt to claim that the question “Does God Hate Women?” was unintelligible. Especially after reading the book.

I mean, it’s not rocket surgery, is it? I’ve read the book. God, if it exists, doesn’t do press conferences, so the only information we can get about it is second-hand; from believers modern and ancient. In your book, you present many examples of believers engaging in horrendous abuses of women and explicitly claiming it’s their god’s will.

So, since the behaviour and statements of believers are our only source of information about this “god”, whatever it may be, it becomes natural to ask, “does God hate women?”. I mean, one may think the answer is no, but at the very least it’s understandable that the question would be asked, on the basis of what you present in the book.

I mean, if there was a book detailing examples of Christians doing charity work and openly stating that they did it for God, would Bunting then find the question “does god approve of charity work” unintelligible?

The misrepresentation is endemic. There’s an even worse example over at Harry’s Place. I tried repeatedly to explain to the author where he went wrong; he replied, but without addressing my point. (Scroll down through the comments to see my rebuttals and his responses, if you are interested. I warn you – it’s depressing!)

Ach, I bet it is depressing – therefore I shall rush off to read it. I’ve been engaging in an equally depressing flailing-match for the past couple of days, also encountering endless non-responsiveness.

Sigh. So am I to understand that Jean Kazez (via OB’s hotlinking of her blog)- who gives no indication that she’s been following this debate carefully – has yet again decided that Mooney’s mealy-mouthed machinations are perfectly plausible and intellectually sound? Would it be unseemly of me, or would it be too. . well, obstreperous or “in her face,” to ask her to read the whole damned sorry affair before she pronounces judgment?

I’m extraordinarily tired of being told to be nicer, more circumspect, more sensitive, more understanding, and more giving, to conversational partners who demonstrate absolutely no intellectual or ethical rectitude. Especially – and I’m looking at you, Jean Kazez – by people who ought to know better.

No, I killed it by trying too hard to get a non-evasive answer. Jean ended the discussion the last time I did that, too, after we had a huge wrangle over the Danish cartoons. She thinks (says she thinks) it’s just that I won’t accept disagreement; I think it’s that she moves the goal posts nearly every time she replies. SIWOTI.

if only he just misrepresented Harris’s views on Collins. but he starts the whole article with a “poisoning the well” attempt, where he simply misrepresents almost everything, that Harris ever said. so, according to Brown, Harris advocates torture, the killing of people for beliefs, and so on. later, in one of his comments, he also claims, that Harris wants to get rid of religion by killing all the fanatics.

It seems to come down to religion being beyond criticism. Either the nonreligious don’t or can’t understand religion well enough to criticize it or their criticisms will be counterproductive.

I was rereading theologian Nicholas Lash’s review of “The God Delusion” and although he says some things with which I agree, he also claims Dawkins just doesn’t know enough theology to write such a book. Here’s why – Dawkin’s definitions are all wrong.

Lash says the following:

“To believe in God, to have faith in God, as Christianity understands these things, is (to quote Augustine again) “in believing to love, in believing to delight, in believing to walk towards him, and be incorporated amongst the limbs and members of his body”.”

“Religion is the virtue of giving God God’s due.”

“[R]eligion’s most fundamental role [is] appropriate response to invitations not of our invention.”

“Durkheim’s definition: “the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself.”

No wonder Dawkin’s doesn’t get it right – how could he given these definitions – religion is everything and nothing at the same time – sort of like god.

Then you get the people who claim it is absolutely obvious (no evidence needed) that criticizing religion will never help someone to understand something even if their religion is the only thing standing in the way of understanding. Yet, the thing repeated over and over again by education experts is that misconceptions must be confronted if learning is to occur. If someone’s religion says that the earth is 6000 years old then we need to show them why that is wrong and a 4.5 billion year old earth is correct. It is not enough to provide evidence for an old earth, one must also provide evidence against their current understanding. If the goal is understanding evolution (for instance) then the religious beliefs of most people in the States will need to be confronted and they will need to accept that they are currently wrong.

Michael, of all the theologians, Nicholas Lash must be one of the most obscure! In fact, I find most of his stuff virtually unreadable – at least something he shares with the current occupant of Augustine’s (no, not Hippo) throne. It’s got almost entirely to do with deniability. The advantage of the straightfoward believers of old is that they actually believed something.

Science – despite Lash’s misdirections – has made this impossible, so they have to make shift with things like love and things that they think point us to something transcendent. Of course, in one sense he is right, since the German Wissenschaft, of course, includes all sorts of ‘disciplines’ within its compass, but, clearly, theology is not a discipline, even theologians can write impenetrable nonsense dripping with sarcasm. But Naturwissenschaft, as even Lash should know, is not nearly so roomy a house.

If what Lash is talking about – and I stopped taking New Blackfriars around the time of the “Instruction of the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian” (or some such title) where it is explicitly said – and I don’t have it before me – that even when a theologian has demonstrated something rationally, the authority of the Magisterium overrides that of reason – is rational disourse, then gods, goddesses, godlings and all the rest don’t make an appearance. It’s all very well quoting Augustine, but the Nicene Creed begins: “Credo in unum Deum.” Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it on Dover Beach.

I am going to confess to being pulled in different directions by this debate. I hear much of what you say about Brown.

But equally, I found much of ‘The End of Faith’ appalling, and at least some of the views Brown attributes to Harris are surely either true, or if not actually true, a reasonable inference. Harris is, I think, in the more controversial areas, often quite evasive. I don’t see how you can read the book and not think, overall, he is defending torture (you may be able to quote bits which modify the argument, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t be evidence of his evasiveness).

It’s striking that on Brown’s CIF thread there are not a few people who lay into Brown for falsely accusing Harris of defending torture, and then… denounce Brown for thinking torture is always wrong.

And you get, for instance, this from Jerry Coyne, apropos of Brown (and the argument about whether the existence of God is properly speaking a scientific one): “As far as I can see — and yes, I’ve read theology — there has never been a better refutation of the idea of a loving and omnipotent god than the existence of horrible, god-preventable things happening to innocent people. That’s an empirical observation, and the world didn’t have to be that way. Another, of course, is that prayer doesn’t work.”

This seems to me simply cretinous – as if people’s belief in God can be addressed in these terms.

But equally, I found much of ‘The End of Faith’ appalling, and at least some of the views Brown attributes to Harris are surely either true, or if not actually true, a reasonable inference. Harris is, I think, in the more controversial areas, often quite evasive. I don’t see how you can read the book and not think, overall, he is defending torture (you may be able to quote bits which modify the argument, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t be evidence of his evasiveness).

I agree. If not evasive, then he was being obtuse and irresponsible. I wonder what he thinks now that it has been revealed that his country used torture to attempt to justify war, not to avoid it. But I still think it’s an ad hominem to try to dismiss his views on Collins based on that.

This seems to me simply cretinous – as if people’s belief in God can be addressed in these terms.

I don’t think Coyne expects believers to take it in those terms, but it’s not his fault that they are not being consistent. Empirical observations of good and beautiful things are taken as evidence for God all the time. It’s not a scientific hypothesis – it’s pseudoscience.

But equally, I found much of ‘The End of Faith’ appalling, and at least some of the views Brown attributes to Harris are surely either true, or if not actually true, a reasonable inference. Harris is, I think, in the more controversial areas, often quite evasive.

» windy:

I agree. If not evasive, then he was being obtuse and irresponsible. I wonder what he thinks now that it has been revealed that his country used torture to attempt to justify war, not to avoid it.

Let’s just have a look at what he actually writes in The End of Faith, shall we?

It appears that such restraint in the use of torture cannot be reconciled with our willingness to wage war in the first place. What, after all, is “collateral damage” but the inadvertaent torture of innocent men, women, and children? Whenever we consent to drop bombs, we do so with the knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them. It is curious that while the torture of Osama bin Laden himself could be expected to provoke convulsions of conscience among our leaders, the unintended (though perfectly foreseeable, and therefore accepted) slaughter of children does not.

… Admittedly, this would be a ghastly result to have reached by logical argument, and we will want to find some way of escaping it.

Harris is certainly not evasive. Neither does one have to infere what he thinks. He very clearly says that torture isn’t something we should want to do, but we should have a good look at the actual reasons that we use. Because they betray the most egregious, and the most barbaric, hipocrisy.

He says elsewhere that he “would be sincerely grateful to have [his] mind changed” about his reasoning. And in any case, he spends almost all his time on showcasing the actual horrors of modern war. I think the least one should ask is why in goodness’ name the healines are ‘Harris supports torture’ instead of ‘Harris’s searing indictment of war’.

But Brown’s accuracy about the quality of Harris’s book is quite independent of what I talk about in the post. The post is about what Brown said about Harris’s op-ed about Collins. I was careful to talk only about that.

I’m not crazy about Harris’s book either, partly because he has a terrible case of assumed male and I always get very tired of that very quickly.

But this post was about what Brown said about the article, not the book.

Harris, I think, was a bit sloppy in his defense of atheism. In rebutting the “atheists require faith” claim (from Collins), Harris writes that “disbelief in the God of Abraham does not require that one search the entire cosmos and find Him absent; it only requires that one consider the evidence put forward by believers to be insufficient”. That’s not at all fair, because that is the definition of an agnostic, not an atheist.

Rather, there have to be two added steps to make that agnostic an atheist: they have to have the conviction that beliefs ought to map onto the evidence (call it evidentialism), and, probably most importantly, they need to be unmotivated to assume the existence of any deities. Faith, by its definition, is anti-evidentialist, in the above sense. That’s what makes the Collins-style argument inoperative.

That having been said, I was surprised to find out just now that it is “cretinous” to suppose that a theist’s beliefs want to track the evidence. Really? So I suppose it must be uncommon for honest folks to go through a crisis of faith when they encounter visceral reminders of human suffering. For if they were common, then it would be reasonable to follow the intuitions that they derive from.

But if these crises of faith are uncommon, then it would be tantamount to believing that the problem of evil is not really a problem. I should hope that’s not the case. For recognition that the problem of evil really is a problem is an indication that the person in question is actually sane. And if a person is insane, all rational avenues for persuasion are severed.

Indeed. Apologies. I was using this thread as an opportunity to raise wider issues (which Brown touches on, and which underlie what he is specifically objecting to about Harris).

Peter:

“He very clearly says that torture isn’t something we should want to do, but we should have a good look at the actual reasons that we use. Because they betray the most egregious, and the most barbaric, hipocrisy.”

But since he also appears to be justifying war, surely the argument runs – 1. war necessary (because Islam is so crazy); 2. collatoral damage a consequence of war which we accept; 3. therefore why are we so squeamish about torture.

Of course he wrings his hands about how nasty torture is. But the book is hardly an argument *against* torture, is it?

I might well be too stupid to understand the subtleties of Harris’ argument, but it’s not because I’m lazy. I read the book, found some of interesting and much of it appalling. Maybe it’s his fault for not expressing himself clearly.

“I think the least one should ask is why in goodness’ name the healines are ‘Harris supports torture’ instead of ‘Harris’s searing indictment of war’.”

If Harris’ defense of torture was actually Swiftian satire, I must admit that it went over my head. Because I don’t actually see the ‘searing indictment of war’:

I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.

The only way to rule out collateral damage would be to refuse to fight wars under any circumstances. As a foreign policy, this would leave us with something like the absolute pacifism of Gandhi. While pacifism in this form can constitute a direct confrontation with injustice (and requires considerable bravery), it is only applicable to a limited range of human conflicts. Where it is not applicable, it is seems flagrantly immoral.

It is astonishing, isn’t it, how little one sees of things one isn’t looking for. But I suppose you’re right. Harris is probably just trying to justify war when he talks about “accidentally blowing [people] to bits”, killing “women and girls by dropping bombs from pristine heights”, and “the damage … to the bodies and minds of innocent children in Afghanistan and Iraq”. I dunno. I guess so.

I think he is presenting war as a regrettable, but necessary evil. He doesn’t say ‘war is just as bad as torture, so let’s bring our troops home’. He says it would be ‘flagrantly immoral’ to refuse to fight wars because of collateral damage. To me this comes short of a ‘searing indictment of war’.

But the entire argument of the book is that Islam (religion as a whole, but Islam in particular) is so backward that there isn’t much choice but combat it as forcefully as possible. He thinks war is awful, obviously – but surely, in the sense that absolutely anyone who is not deranged thinks war is awful. It is not a book against war or its consequences. And therefore the entire discussion about torture is framed in that context – of all this is regrettable. As good liberal westerners we don’t *want* to do these ghastly things, but our enemies leave us no choice.

It’s also an argument on one level for hoping that religious people, and Muslims in particular, come to their senses and stop believing (in God, etc) so these ghastly things will not be necessary.

But he seems pretty pessimistic to me about the chances of that happening.

And yet, you didn’t give any quotes in support of your claims. What else, in your opinion, does that amount to, then?

But the entire argument of the book is that Islam (religion as a whole, but Islam in particular) is so backward that there isn’t much choice but combat it as forcefully as possible.

Then perhaps we shouldn’t be using the broadest brush in the box to say that “he also appears to be justifying war”. What he is justifying is to use force against an opponent who will rather kill than see sense. I think that conclusion is sound. His premise, however, may very well not be, and I don’t think he has got the facts on his side there, to be honest.

And he defines this pacifism as a refusal to fight all wars, something that ruling out all collateral damage would lead to. My rephrasing, “to refuse to fight wars because of collateral damage” is the kind of pacifism that Harris was talking about. So what are you objecting to?

But at least you’re on-topic in a thread about misrepresentation. Windy indeed.

I agree that Harris gets misrepresented egregiously, I just don’t agree with your interpretation on this one issue, why do you need to paint it as willful misrepresentation? And I’m a little flattered by the insult, but still, that was pretty lame ;)

My rephrasing, “to refuse to fight wars because of collateral damage” is the kind of pacifism that Harris was talking about. So what are you objecting to?

I can see your confusion now, because Harris’s argument there actually does flow from the consideration of collateral damage—which I think is particularly weak. But he still isn’t saying what you’re suggesting. He actually stresses that pacifism has its applications. Only where it is not applicable, he sees it as “flagrantly immoral”. That’s a relevant difference, don’t you think?

And I’m a little flattered by the insult, but still, that was pretty lame ;)

It might have been lame, but how is a pretty plausible description of your argument an insult?

I’m not quite sure what this discussion is about now. Certainly, it has, in fact, raised the question of whether Harris’ work has been given the kind of detailed analysis it probably deserves, but that’s really too big a topic for this thread, and Ophelia really did map it out pretty well in her opening round. The point is that the ‘new atheists’ (so called) are being used merely as counters in a wider cultural struggle, the terms of which are by no means clear.

Indeed, it’s hard to find out which side people are on. Is Andrew Brown an atheist, as he claims, or not? Certainly, he seems, by multiple misrepresentations, to have carved out a space for himself in the ranks of believers, while not noting that believers can be as cunningly deceiving as he has been. Indeed, like most cultural struggles – such as that between the Ancients and the Moderns in the 18th century – boundaries get blurred, and, in the end, no one knows what the fight was really all about. This is in danger of happening here.

The best thing to do is to acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes – Harris does too, largely because he lacks a light touch, I think, and seems unable to see some of the humour in the human comedy – but that when people do talk about others they should at least try to be as accurate as they can be. This Andrew Brown, for one, has not done. Indeed, he moves counters around a cultural map much like Hitler used to move non-existent armies and divisions around a map of Berlin during the last few days of his thousand year Reich.

For some reason the ‘atheist haters’, as Ophelia calls them, seem unable to be honest about what they are hating. This may have something to do with the uncertainty of what they love. Perhaps if they knew what they were defending, they would have a better idea. The same goes for all of us. We may find allies where we least expect them, and enemies where we thought we had found friends – at least on some things. But whether we want to praise or to indict war, for example, we probably should not try to argue it out here. And, for all its nuance, Harris should have left torture out of his book. It’s misleading and it was unnecessary. and it made him look unreasoning.

Suffice to say that Brown is on a crusade, and like all those who charge into the middle of things without paying attention to those to the right of him, and those to the left, he really doesn’t seem to be aware of mêlée he’s in the middle of. Don’t forget. He’s been mentioned in dispatches – he won a Templeton prize! You can’t expect him to take note of the kinds of weapons his opponents are carrying. The idea is to shoot first, and ask questions later. The point is to show that he’s just firing blanks.

Probably true. But he thought it was necessary, because he thinks Islam is a clear and present danger. Unfortunately, he didn’t present too many facts to support that claim. Just invoking 9/11 didn’t work for me.

and it made him look unreasoning

But that’s the whole point of my insisting, Eric. At least he was reasoning where most everybody else is content with unthinking moral absolutes. And that’s part of his message: Even though our reasoning will go wrong from time to tome, we need to actually engage in reasoning wherever we can. And that I wholeheartedly agree with.

There is a problem lurking here, and we need to face it. Certainly, morality is something about which we must reason. However, as every moral philosophy has shown, there is no absolutely rational foundation for morality. At some point we need to stop and say: ‘This is how things are.’

Harris asks why, if we’re willing to endanger children with bombs, we should be unwilling to torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? It may be a good question, or it may not be. He needs more than a few pages to answer it, and that’s all he gives himself. And, no matter how immediate a threat Islam was at the time that Harris was writing, he was writing, and not dropping bombs. So he needed more than a clear and present danger before he dealt with the morality of torture in a few sentences.

Alan Dershowitz and Sam Harris opened a space where torture became thinkable, and then doable, and then doable again and again and again and again to the same person. What Sam Harris said was unnecessary, and it was not reasoned. That’s precisely the problem with it, and that’s why it’s still held to his account. You can’t simply argue from apparent moral equivalencies to moral conclusions, which is essentially what Harris does. This is not moral reasoning.

One of the problems here is that we find it hard to see what’s really going on, there’s so much dust of struggle around. That was my point. The dust hasn’t settled either.

I can see your confusion now, because Harris’s argument there actually does flow from the consideration of collateral damage—which I think is particularly weak. He actually stresses that pacifism has its applications. Only where it is not applicable, he sees it as “flagrantly immoral”. That’s a relevant difference, don’t you think?

Difference, compared to what? I didn’t say Harris considered all pacifism flagrantly immoral. Harris thinks there’s a “limited range of human conflicts” where pacifism is applicable, but he would consider absolute pacifism as a foreign policy – the refusal to fight wars altogether – immoral. Do you disagree?

In particular, Harris does not appear to consider pacifism a viable alternative to the ‘war on terror’, so the other applications of pacifism are not particularly relevant to his argument.

how is a pretty plausible description of your argument an insult?

I assumed that the allusion to my nickname was, since I don’t see how “windy” is a plausible description of my argument.

And, no matter how immediate a threat Islam was at the time that Harris was writing, he was writing, and not dropping bombs. So he needed more than a clear and present danger before he dealt with the morality of torture in a few sentences.

I don’t see your point, I’m afraid.

Alan Dershowitz and Sam Harris opened a space where torture became thinkable, and then doable, and then doable again and again and again and again to the same person.

I wouldn’t want to talk about Dershowitz, since he has trouble even being honest. But you seem to be confusing Harris for John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Dick Cheney. They opened that space, in the most disgracefully dishonest and indeed patently illegal manner imaginable. To suggest that Harris played a role that is even remotely comparable is absurd. Especially in the absence of any supporting arguments.

By the looks of things we agree about quite a bit (I thought Harris’ general argument about Islam was pretty thin; it seems so do you). Good. That’s a discussion I want to have – I think often this particular argument gets both polarised and confusing (I find myself agreeing partly with both sides). I think I’m still working out a position.

I don’t really accept that I have to provide quotes, chapter and verse, etc in a little thread like this. You’ve provided the odd quote, but they don’t seem to me to back your case up much. Inevitably, in this sort of forum, we rely on assertion a fair bit.

I guess I do, but I don’t see where you’re going with this. Your starting point was to say that Harris was irresponsible—with a marked lack of substantial evidence, which I hope explains the reference to your nick. I replied that he was rather even-handed. I said, why shouldn’t we be charitable instead of judgmental and focus on Harris’s highlighting of the abject horrors of war. You said you couldn’t see that. I can then only repeat Harris’s qoute:

“Whenever we consent to drop bombs, we do so with the knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them.”

I was submitting that that kind of thing can arguably just as well be described as an indictment of war as his treatment of torture could be seen as reprehensible. I was, in summary, questioning the wisdom of jumping all over him for statements about torture that were at least reasoned. It still seems to me to be unbalanced.

By the looks of things we agree about quite a bit (I thought Harris’ general argument about Islam was pretty thin; it seems so do you). Good. That’s a discussion I want to have – I think often this particular argument gets both polarised and confusing (I find myself agreeing partly with both sides). I think I’m still working out a position.

I think that’s what Sam Harris would say too. Why else would he say he’d be glad to be shown wrong? I think Harris’s torture passage goes wrong in two or three places (one of them astutely spotted by windy), but specifically the comparison to collateral damage and war highlights a very important point. As for my case, please see my latest response to windy. I hope that will clear things up.

That’s a discussion I want to have

+1

And that’s why I still think it’s relevant to Ophelia’s post about Andrew Brown. Because Brown, and a couple of other people we could mention, are very quick to box a discussion in into one exceedingly simple-minded dimension. Harris, even though he will be wrong from time to time, as will we all, at least goes to some lengths to keep debates rational and reasoned. As a philosophically literate person should, I might add.

It is almost as if some atheists think that being an atheist is a hateful and unpleasant thing to be. They seem OK with dead atheists, and act all nostalgic about Bertrand Russell. Could it just be that some people dislike Richard Dawkins so much that they develop an unreasoning hatred of anything in any way connected with him? Sam Harris has after all been in the same room as Dawkins, and therefore carries the taint…

I would say it was incompletely reasoned. If an Iraqi intellectual had written an similar article in 2005 called “In Defense of Suicide Attacks” (if you accept collateral damage, do you have a categorical argument against suicide attacks?) – I wonder how Sam Harris would have reacted to it? Even if read charitably, isn’t it likely that it would seem a little one-sided and irresponsible? (Unless it was some sort of biting satire, but again, I don’t see that in Harris)

Peter:

Your starting point was to say that Harris was irresponsible—with a marked lack of substantial evidence

Did you read the next sentence?

“his country used torture to attempt to justify war, not to avoid it.”

This was one way I think Harris was being irresponsible – because he didn’t consider that torture could (and probably would!) be misused. I didn’t quote sources since it has been widely reported by now that torture was used to try to discover/fabricate a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and evidently not to stop ‘ticking time bombs’. But here’s one:

highlighting of the abject horrors of war. You said you couldn’t see that.

I said I can’t see the ‘searing indictment’, not the description of the horrors. As an analogy, consider an article where abortion is described as bloody, painful, dangerous, emotionally devastating, but the alternative of not allowing abortions at all is described as “flagrantly immoral”. I would not conclude that the intent of the article is to deliver an indictment of abortion.

“his country used torture to attempt to justify war, not to avoid it.”

I wasn’t aware those things were meant to be causally related. My mistake.

Maybe I’ve made more out of this than I should. My apologies if I have. Let me make one last attempt at reconciliation, though. Since nobody, I hope, would equate Harris’s level of irresponsibility—or, by extension, responsibility for actual torture—with that of actual criminals like Yoo, Bybee, and Cheney, I would suggest that turn-about is fair play and say: Harris’s is actually an argument against war itself. So let’s work to make war as beyond the pale as torture is right now.

Windy, I guess that’s fair. It was incompletely reasoned. I wasn’t particularly happy about that chapter of Harris’ book from the start. I thought the whole thing had the feeling of an afterthought, and needed more work.

None of this, however, is meant to diminish Ophelia’s response to Andrew Brown. Brown is a superficial opportunist, I think. He puts a finger up to find which way the wind is blowing. He thinks it’s blowing just now against unbelief, so, though he claims to be an unbeliever himself, he jumps onto the anti-atheist jet stream and holds on.

Of course, every writer provides others with sticks to beat him/her with, and Harris is no exception. The question that Brown should be asking himself is not: Does this man make any mistakes? To which the obvious answer is going to be: Of course. What Brown should be asking, however, is whether focusing on Harris’ shortcomings is to characterise him fairly. And the answer to that question is no.

One of the signs that the answer is no is the lengths that people go to in order to condemn him, and others like him. Nothing justifies the intensity of the opposition to the ‘new atheism’, it seems to me, except the fact that they have wandered onto territory that the religious thought was already secure.

Religion had got into a very comfortable relationship with reason and science. Theology pretended to take it all into account. And then, suddenly, religious people fly planeloads of people into skyscrapers, and nothing is quite the same anymore, not surprisingly. But what is surprising is that the religious think they can go back to pretending that there’s nothing to worry about.

Let’s not misunderstand the ire. Like all conservatives, Christians in the West want to keep things the way they were, and they’re trying, as always, to put things back neatly into the cupboard; but the truth is that they simply won’t fit any longer. It’s not the fact that they can find sticks in Harris’, or Hitchens’, or Dawkins’ work to beat their authors with. Of course they can. The proof of what is going on lies not in the fact that people like Brown can pick out little sticks, but that the attack is so frenzied. That’s what gives the game away.

Karen Armsrong can parrot some anodyne nonsense about the apophatic tradition when people are killing themselves in the name of entities that no one, apparently, believes in. The disconnect here is deep and serious, and it shows just how much trouble religious people feel they are in. They want to wish it all away. Well, they can’t. And right now they’re flailing desperately at any target that seems promising. So, we shouldn’t be surprised if they misrepresent what their opponents say. They’re scared. They have every right to be.

I think it goes further than that, to be honest. The religious “moderate” relies on the bizarre behavior of the religious conservative to cover up his own, slightly-less-bizarre behavior. They’re playing the same game, they just differ on how zealous they are about enforcing the rules. But, even when they argue about the fine points, both “moderate” and zealous believers have a vested interest in perpetuating their particular game.

From the perspective of the religious “moderate”, the conservative is still on some level his brother in YHWH/Christ/FSM. At the very least, on a broader level, they both agree as to the validity of theology and the necessity of believing in belief. Atheists, on the other hand, aren’t playing by the rules of any of the games; they constitute a threat to the power structures that both “moderates” and conservatives benefit from.